Nutanix Volumes with Microsoft Windows

NUTANIX VOLUMES WITH MICROSOFT WINDOWS

The Windows ISCSI Initiator is a part of Microsoft’s Window Server 2008,2012.2016,2019 operating system and the main aim is to allow a client machine to access any sort of storage device and so forth, regardless of whether the data is coming from a local or remote location. Once you have created a storage server, such as a Fiber Channel based SAN(Optical) or iSCSI target, and initiated a set of scripts to access the disks on the target machine. The infrastructure that drives Windows Server ISCSI is a block device (or sometimes, it may be a storage bus) and it consists of various servers which are each running an individual Windows Server.

A user connects to the ISCSI target via a domain name or a fully qualified domain name. The domain name is resolved by a domain name server and the user follows a series of steps in order to establish a secured tunnel for communication. Once the connection is established, data is passed between the ISCSI initiator and the remote target.

1) Configuring Windows Clients for ISCSI Connectivity

The following steps provide detailed guidance for configuring iSCSI-based VGs with Nutanix
using Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 2012 (R2) LATER.

If you have Windows 2003 server Download Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18986

2) Start the iSCSI Service and Set the Startup Type to Automatic

3) Get the IQN from the Virtual Machine(s)

5) Create the Nutanix Volume Group

You can perform VG configuration from Prism or by using aCLI from a CVM. The following
example uses aCLI. You only need to perform these steps from any CVM.

a. vg.create vg_name
b. Example: vg.create db1 shared=true
c. Specify shared if the disks are shared across hosts.

4 Add one or more disks to the VG.

a. vg.disk_create db1 container=container_name create_size=disk_size
b. Example: vg.disk_create db1 container=DATABASE create_size=200G

5 Attach the initiator IQN to the VG. Repeat for each host participating in the cluster

a. vg.attach_external vg_name initiator_name=initiator_iqn
b. Example: vg.attach_external db1
initiator_name=iqn.1991-5.com.microsoft:name.ad.local

6) Create an iSCSI Discovery Portal

The discovery portal allows the Windows host to discover the available iSCSI targets in the
Nutanix cluster.

7) Connect to Discovered Targets and Persist the Connections